hold their ranks. The color sergeant, with his guard of from five to eight corporals, therefore became the focal point on which the men dressed, wheeled, and advanced into battle. This emergence of the color sergeant, who replaced the commissioned ensign in carrying the flag, clearly and significantly enhanced the noncommissioned officer's role in combat.

The brief, inconclusive War of 1812 (1812-1815) was followed by thirty years of relative peace. Now the NCO embarked on other duties. The Army accompanied the wave of settlers crossing the continent, surveying the land, building roads and stockades, and garrisoning posts along the routes the pioneers followed. Duty was varied and sometimes dangerous as NCOs led their men in missions that included enforcing treaties with the Great Plains Indians, protecting trading caravans, and blazing trails on the way to Oregon and the Mexican territories of California and Texas. But the NCOS were still small unit leaders and disciplinarians only. The engineering and surveying technology of the peacetime Army was considered the business of officers who had learned it

in the nation's first engineering school, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

The battles of the Mexican War (1846-1848) broadened the Army's experience. The American soldiers who campaigned south of the Rio Grande learned how to conduct successful amphibious landings at Vera Cruz, experienced street-to-street and house-to-house fighting in the battles of Monterrey and Mexico City, won the battle of Contreras after a surprise night march in the pouring rain, and demonstrated the uses of effective artillery-both siege mortars and "flying artillery"-at the battle of Palo Alto and elsewhere. Many NCOS learned skills they would soon need in a greater war, as did many of their officers, including Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee.

Victory over Mexico ushered in another decade of peace, at least with foreign nations. The whole southwestern United States had been conquered and annexed, and the immediate task was to explore, survey, and map the new regions. The Corps of Topographical Engineers took the lead; "Topogs" worked with the Mexican

Boundary Commission, protected by an infantry and a cavalry company (a total of 105 NCOs and privates). The Gold Rush and the movement of settlers into Indian lands helped to bring on new battles with the tribes, and

during the decade of the 1850s the Army recorded no less than twenty-two separate Indian "wars." But even while NCOs led their men across the vast spaces of the West, the United States was drifting toward war.

Neither the Regular Army nor the militia was prepared for the kind of fighting that developed during the Civil War. Some Regular Army NCOs were veterans of the Mexican War, and others had gained experience against nomadic Indian tribes on the Great Plains, but the huge, massed battles of the Civil War were completely different. Most of the thousands of volunteers on both sides who hurried to enlist had no military experience at all. Even members of militia companies who had participated in musters had spent more time on ceremonial or social duties than on serious training. Once in the field, both Regular and volunteer units faced similar challenges and dangers, fighting on many battlefields. Over time, these ordeals in combat created a large cadre of experienced noncommissioned officers, but only at the cost of terrible losses.

During the Civil War both Regular and volunteer full-strength regiments were made up of ten companies, although the volunteer units varied considerably in other respects from state to state. The Regular regimental NCO staff consisted of a sergeant major, a quartermaster sergeant, a commissary sergeant, a hospital steward, and two musicians. Each company had four officers, five sergeants, one wagoner, and sixty-four to eighty-two corporals and privates.

With few exceptions, Regular Army noncommissioned officers remained loyal to the Union when the Civil War broke out. Many were foreign born-some were Canadians and Englishmen, but mostly they included Germans and Irish who had arrived in the United States through the cities of the eastern seaboard and had settled either in the North or the Midwest. They remained loyal to the Union at a time when about a third of the commissioned officers joined the Confederacy.

These men had to rely on the training manuals then in print. The most important when the war broke out were Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott's Infantry Tactics, first published in 1854, and Col. William J. Hardee's Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics, published in 1855. A third manual, Maj. Gen. Silas Casey's U.S. Army Infantry Tactics for the Instructions, Exercises, and Maneuvers of the Soldier, a Company, a Line of Skirmishers, Battalion, Brigade, or Corps D'Armee appeared in 1862 and soon superseded the earlier books. (Changes in weaponry outdated Scott's Tactics, and Hardee defected to the Confederacy.) All three books prescribed a similar

role for the noncommissioned officers.

Casey, like Scott, emphasized the color sergeant's role in controlling unit cadence and direction. Unlike Scott, however, Casey foresaw the heavy battlefield losses the war would bring, and his manual envisioned situations in which senior sergeants would have to take command of units on the spot when all the officers became casualties. He insisted, therefore, that all NCOs be trained in giving commands.

A fundamental problem in the Civil War was that the linear tactics still being used were designed for men carrying smoothbore muskets. With soldiers now armed with rifled muskets, which had a much greater accuracy, casualties were certain to be horrendous unless tactics were changed. The increased killing power of even newer weapons introduced late in the war-breechloading rifles, cavalry carbines, and the Gatling gununderscored the need for more open tactical formations than Casey had called for in 1862. Various unit commanders gradually introduced such formations to reduce the vulnerability of their men to the increased volume and accuracy of enemy fire.

Taking note of those changing realities during the course of the war, Bvt. Maj. Gen. Emory Upton then prepared a new manual to supplement Casey's. His Tactics, adopted as Army doctrine in 1867, placed greater emphasis upon simplicity of maneuver. His instructions could be taught more easily by NCOs to new troops, shortened training time, and increased the soldier's effective term of service.

The gradual elimination of linear tactics after the Civil War redefined the NCO's combat leadership role. Throughout the world, a technological revolution continued to sweep over all armies, supplying both the infantry and the artillery with weapons of ever growing lethality. These weapons broke up the use of closepacked masses of troops, forcing them into a more open order of battle preceded by lines of skirmishes. This change in tactics emphasized and expanded the role of small unit leaders-the noncommissioned officers-in maintaining order on a more complex battlefield.

The Regular Army of the interwar years (1866–1898) was a small, tough, close-knit body of men. Except for some coast artillerymen, these soldiers had few connections with American society at large. Most noncommissioned officers were bachelors. At least one-quarter of

divisions (two infantry and one dismounted cavalry) were arrayed for battle for the first time in post-Civil War open tactical formations. Individual NCOS showed they could lead their men successfully in this new way of fighting. Most of the American troops were regulars, but some volunteer units were outstanding-including the famous Rough Riders. The Spanish forces, isolated by the U.S. Navy, which had destroyed or bottled up their fleet, surrendered within a matter of days.

The Army learned a number of things from the operations in the Caribbean, including some valuable lessons on joint operations with the Navy. The painful experiences with tropical disease in Cuba led to a Medical Department investigation of the cause of yellow fever and the transmission of typhoid. Enlisted volunteers played a heroic part in the yellow fever experiments, some winning stripes for their courage. A healthier Army was the result, with tighter sanitation rules that NCOs enforced in camp and field. Never again did the Army as a whole suffer such losses from disease. Significantly, during a war marked by poor food, the

NCO corps added a new specialist. Each company, for the first time, got a designated, permanent cook with noncommissioned officer status.

In Asia, there were other lessons for the Army to learn. The Spanish forces in the Philippines were quickly pinned down by the American fleet, by the American VIII Corps-fresh from San Francisco-and by Filipino insurgents who were eager to win independence. The Spanish in Manila surrendered after a token resistance that cost the Americans only seventeen dead. But the U.S. forces soon found they had a new fight on their hands. The insurgents were no more willing to see their country run by Americans than by Spaniards. After a few months of uneasy collaboration, the Filipinos launched an armed insurrection against their new colonial rulers.

The Philippine Insurrection lasted over three and one-half years, with most of the fighting taking place in the mountains and jungles. The insurgents were excellent guerrilla fighters, and the Army had to rely on all of its experience gained in fighting the Great Plains Indians and the Seminoles to campaign successfully